SVSLOPE® represents the new standard in slope stability analysis. Users can perform classic limit equilibrium slope analysis of soil or rock slopes by the method of slices or newer stress-based methods.

Our newly released 2nd Generation SVSLOPE® is the most advanced 3D Slope Stability Analysis Software available. Advanced searching methods are implemented to correctly determine the location of the critical slip surface. Powerful 2D or 3D analysis is possible for increased accuracy in the calculation of the factor of safety. Advanced probabilistic analysis or accommodation of spatial variation is possible with the software. SVSLOPE® can be combined with SVFLUX™ to import pore-water pressures or SVSOLID™GT to import soil stress conditions.

Key features and enhancements of SVSLOPE®:

Advanced Orientation Analysis: Models can now be built fully in 3D and a slip in any arbitrary sliding direction can be analyzed. This ability is exclusive to the SVSLOPE®3D module and is not offered by any other competing product.

Advanced stochastic analysis such as Monte Carlo, Latin Hypercube, and the Alternative Point Estimation Method (APEM) allow the end-user to determine normal distributions of the factor of safety as well as the probability of failure

What Our Customers Say

"Although I just started to use the SVSLOPE® 2D/3D and SVDESIGNER™ software, I would like to express my very high evaluation of the package from a user’s point of view and I am proud of using this software!
Also, much thanks to the support team for the quick responses.
Again, the products are so impressive."

Tiequn Feng Ph.D., P.Eng

Senior Geotechnical Advisor at Imperial Oil

"The use of SVSLOPE® software as part of a research project on clay slopes under seismic conditions with the Université de Sherbrooke has been incredibly easy and effective. The continuation of this research with SoilVision is promising, along with their great technical support - which was always available and a passionate geotechnical team supporting the project."

Jonathan Mole

Student at Université de Sherbrooke

"We have allowed our students the choice of using multiple Geotechnical software suites in our Dam Design and other Geotechnical courses. Our students consistently gravitate towards SoilVision software as being the most modern and user-friendly."

Gilson Gitirana Jr.

Associate Professor at Federal University of Goiás

"I've been a geotechnical engineer for more than 25 years and SoilVision has the best tech support I have ever worked with. I truly appreciate their patience and help over the past year."

Donald Tharp

Principal Engineer at Ninyo & Moore

"Peter Brett Associates have been looking to update our existing slope stability software over the last year. After extensive research and trials, SVSLOPE® developed by SoilVision Systems Ltd. was found to meet all our existing and future design requirements. Its ease of use for modeling simple as well as complex geological and geometrical problems was a critical factor in our assessment as well as the incorporation of design to the Eurocodes. Their customer support has been faultless and their willingness to develop the software to meet our own specific design requirements is a most gratifying added bonus."

"We love the fact that SVSLOPE® is part of an integrated suite of software and that, if required, 3D analysis can be undertaken. We would recommend this product to other geotechnical consulting firms."

Asmi Desai

Principal Engineer at Peter Brett Associates LLP

"We have been using SVSLOPE® and SVFLUX™ for the past year and have found them to be efficient and productive engineering tools which have allowed us to offer our services in an efficient manner. The capability of automated increased discretization of the mesh is an absolute benefit to our modeling, reducing time and effort. We have found the software quick and easy for our engineers to train and utilize. I would recommend this product to other geotechnical consulting firms."

Barry L. Carlson, P.E.

President at InTerraLogic

"The software is well documented and comes with number of useful example models. We were able to quickly begin creating models after a short review of the user interface and going through the available on-line webinars. The software offers solid benefits of less conservatism and the ability to model real geometry."

Steven A. Haire, P.E.

Chief Geotechnical Engineer at Ninyo & Moore

"This new software for stability analysis includes a number of state-of-the-art options for probabilistic slope stability analysis. This feature, combined with comprehensive deterministic analyses, will provide new opportunities to build confidence in the results of a site-specific analysis.”

Prof. Dirk van Zyl, Ph.D., P.E.

Professor of Mine Life Cycle Systems at University of British Columbia

"I'm excited to see the release of this new and innovative product. I look forward to and encourage the application of this software on additional geotechnical projects.”

Prof. Ward Wilson, Ph.D., P.Eng.

Mining Chair at University of British Columbia

"In consulting engineering practice, I am increasingly made aware of the important and beneficial role that modeling the unsaturated soil zone can play in providing the client with the best possible engineered solution. The SoilVision software has made it possible to readily estimate and incorporate unsaturated soil properties into the modeling of saturated-unsaturated soil systems.”

Del Fredlund, O.C., Ph.D., P.Eng.

Senior Project Engineer at Golder Associates

What Students and Professors Say

"SVSOILS™ has provided us with a valuable database required for model development and research in various areas of unsaturated soils mechanics. Our sincere gratitude is expressed to SoilVision™ team for their continuous support. "

Professor Ghassem Habibagahi

Department of Civil Engineering at Shiraz University

"I have been using SoilVision's SVOFFICE™ software for research and training purposes for a number of years now. Myself and my colleagues have developed a number of training modules in this software, and have been using these to teach limit equilibrium and flow modeling to undergraduate students in the civil, environmental and mining engineering streams.

In my opinion, this software is easy to learn and fun to use. The built-in tutorials are sufficient to get one started. With these tutorials, my students were generally able to complete their analyses with minimal involvement on my side.

Based on my own experience, it takes around a month of full-time use to become reasonably competent with the software (provided that one understands the theoretical underpinnings of this type of analysis) - a short learning curve, compared to other products of similar complexity. The interface is intuitive enough for me to figure out things on my own, and I rarely had the need to ask for help.

I don't generally like praising anything excessively, and I don't post particularly glowing reviews for anything. Having said that, I must mention the SoilVision support. At some point during my research, I was conducting a number of replication studies for my thesis. In that period, I must have emailed SoilVision's support anywhere from 2 to 5 times a day, with fairly complex (and sometimes very dumb) questions. I always got a response by the end of the day, and a resolution within a couple days at most. In a number of urgent cases (such as during a tutorial session with a classroom of students) I called them directly on the phone and, with senior product engineers involved, had the issue addressed in minutes."

Elena Zabolotnii, PEng MEng

PhD Candidate, Geotechnical Engineering at University of Alberta

"The use of SVSLOPE® software as part of a research project on clay slopes under seismic conditions with the Université de Sherbrooke has been incredibly easy and effective. The continuation of this research with SoilVision is promising, along with their great technical support - which was always available and a passionate geotechnical team supporting the project."

Jonathan Mole

Student at Université de Sherbrooke

"We have allowed our students the choice of using multiple Geotechnical software suites in our Dam Design and other Geotechnical courses. Our students consistently gravitate towards SoilVision software as being the most modern and user-friendly."

Gilson Gitirana Jr.

Associate Professor at Federal University of Goiás

"This new software for stability analysis includes a number of state-of-the-art options for probabilistic slope stability analysis. This feature, combined with comprehensive deterministic analyses, will provide new opportunities to build confidence in the results of a site-specific analysis.”

Prof. Dirk van Zyl, Ph.D., P.E.

Professor of Mine Life Cycle Systems at University of British Columbia

"I'm excited to see the release of this new and innovative product. I look forward to and encourage the application of this software on additional geotechnical projects.”

Prof. Ward Wilson, Ph.D., P.Eng.

Mining Chair at University of British Columbia

"In consulting engineering practice, I am increasingly made aware of the important and beneficial role that modeling the unsaturated soil zone can play in providing the client with the best possible engineered solution. The SoilVision software has made it possible to readily estimate and incorporate unsaturated soil properties into the modeling of saturated-unsaturated soil systems.”

Software for geotechnical, civil, or mining engineering projects.

Our limit equilibrium slope stability package has proven popular with our clients. As such it has continued to receive development efforts from our team and we are pleased to present a number of features which solidify the software's position as the best geotechnical stability package on the market.

SVSLOPE® represents the new standard in slope stability analysis. Users can perform classic limit equilibrium slope analysis by the method of slices or newer stress-based methods. Advanced searching methods are implemented to correctly determine the correct location of the critical slip surface.

New in SVOFFICE™5 is the tight integration with SVDESIGNER™ conceptual modeling software and the subsequent abilities to represent complex models built from triangulated surfaces (TINS) as well as grids. A new graphics engine also greatly speeds the creation of complex models and the visualization of results.

SVSLOPE® is characterized by an advanced probability analysis as well as integration with other packages in SVOFFICE™5. The streamlined user interface and advanced slip surface searching algorithms make for fast model setup and computation times.

We have put extensive effort into verifying SVSLOPE® against classic case-study scenarios and existing slope stability software packages such as Clara/W. Some original interface concepts were inspired by Clara/W and have been implemented in SVSLOPE® in order to provide continuity of use. The team at SoilVision Systems Ltd. represents an advanced group of geotechnical engineers and software developers with M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees and decades of experience which ensures that your modeling will be successful and reliable. This allows users to be confident that results from SVSLOPE® are correct.

SVSLOPE® is currently being used on world-class slope stability projects. Top slope stability industry experts already support the use of SVSLOPE® as the new standard in slope stability modeling.

Stability analysis of reinforced and unreinforced earth slopes with and without seepage forces

SVSLOPE
®2D DEVELOPMENT

It was a number of years ago that we laid out the design for a slope stability software project. The SVSLOPE®2D project represents the most ambitious project our company had ever undertaken. The resources and time periods needed for this type of project were daunting. Why do this project?

We have observed significant changes in the research literature on the numerical modeling methodologies being proposed for slope stability analysis in geotechnical engineering and felt that there was need for a software tool that reflected the present and future trend of geotechnical engineering practice.

The SVSLOPE®2D software provides easier access to statistical methods and allows the linear and nonlinear analysis of unsaturated soil conditions in a slope. The software has implemented cutting edge slope stability analysis methods that are receiving attention in the research literature. This new software tool is implemented on the latest software platforms, has a simple user interface and is supported with extensive help systems and training tools. The concept was to create and release a software package that was more technically advanced and still easier to use than any existing software tools.

In order to develop such a software tool, the technical staff at SoilVision began by assembling a team of technical professionals and experts to guide the development of the new package. The core development team assembled to undertake the software development had received graduate degrees by studying under slope stability experts such as:

Yamagami (dynamic programming research)

Morgenstern (Morgenstern-Price method; statistical analysis)

Fredlund (GLE method; dynamic programming research).

It was important that each member of the development team had experience in both geotechnical engineering as well as major software development experience. The core development team included Tiequn Feng, PhD/PEng, HaiHua Lu, MSc, Murray Fredlund, PhD/PEng, Rob Thode, BSc/PEng, Del Fredlund, PhD/PEng/OC, Gilson Gitirana, PhD/PE, Dirk van Zyl, PhD/PE, and Ward Wilson, PhD/PEng. The combined group provided significant experience from the field of slope stability analysis.

Once the team was assembled, work began by laying out the design concepts and framework. Then the scheduling of the project was laid out. As in any large project, the only certainty was that there be ongoing change. Given the size of the project and the number of different software technologies available there was a significant amount of trial and error in order to obtain the desired final product.

Proper documentation of the software was a priority. The documentation was divided separately into a user’s manual, a tutorial manual, a verification manual, and a theory manual. Software for document versioning and maintenance and delivery of the core documents was reviewed and a system for delivering suitable help assistance on a variety of formats was established.

Verification of the software package was considered of paramount importance and a great deal of time was extended comparing SVSLOPE®2D results to published benchmarks and other slope stability software packages. A great deal of lively discussion ensued internally and with our external review board of experts regarding the proper quantification of a “right” answer! During re-visitation and programming of classic limit equilibrium method of slices it was both informative to track the application of these methodologies to various classes of models.

In all, more than 100 benchmark example models have been set up, solved, and documented in our verification manual. These benchmark example models are all solved to required tolerance limits prior to the release of any particular version of the software.

Once the software was prototyped, it was also considered important to put the software into hands of consultants with significant slope stability modeling experience where the product could be subjected to critical testing and examination. The “Beta” version version has performed well. The release date of the project has been pushed back a number of times in order to make all necessary adjustments and corrections have been implemented to ensure seamless performance of the software.

We are pleased to introduce you to SVSLOPE®2D, a new standard in slope stability analysis. It is the culmination of years of work, thousands of man-hours and the most extensive review and verification program ever executed by our company. The software has already been applied to world-class slope stability projects.

SVSLOPE®2D is intended to provide geotechnical consultants with a comprehensive slope stability package that pays special attention to recent advances in the analysis of natural and man-made slope. We feel that this product implements a balance of leading edge technologies as well as classic slope stability methods and will provide added value to geotechnical engineering consultants. We welcome you to use the results of our hard work!

SVSLOPE®3D DEVELOPMENT

Planning the release of a 3D slope stability package was the original intent of our development of a limit equilibrium software package. Releasing the 2D aspect of this type of analysis in June of 2008 was a stepping stone. Since we had the team of slope stability experts assembled it seemed the only logical thing to do to proceed in this manner with extending the original 2D product. The background software engineering structure of our other packages was geared for easy 2D or 3D implementations and the graphical tools for creating and manipulating 3D models were already in place. However, planning a large software development project almost never proceeds as planned and numerous changes and accommodations (that are too detailed to be mentioned at this time) were needed along the way.

It is interesting how slope stability analysis has developed over the years. Most slope stability failures are inherently 3D given the dish shaped failure surface. It is fortunate that the practice of geotechnical engineering has been as successful as it has using largely a two-dimensional tool for three-dimensional analysis. It has been noted, however, that more and more analyses are requiring more accurate representation of the slope stability analysis. Therefore it is felt that 3D analysis offers significant advantages in many cases.

Extending the 2D analysis into 3D was not as simple as just turning on a third dimension. Some of the published papers regarding three-dimensional analysis contain errors and oversights and needed further testing and improvement to perform well in three dimensions. The three-dimensional calculations also become significantly more iterative. Therefore a fair amount of work regarding optimization of the speed of three-dimensional calculations had to be performed. In the end of this work paid off as the speed of the three-dimensional analysis is surprisingly fast in SVSLOPE®3D. Most benchmarks making use of the grid and radius search method ran in terms of seconds. There is therefore little hindrance on analysis speed when moving to a three-dimensional analysis.

A significant part of the design of the 3D package was the user interface. One of the largest hindrances to developing 3D models in the past has been the complexity of inputting a three-dimensional model into the computer. Fortunately SVSLOPE®3D makes use of the same three-dimensional interface used in our other 3D packages such as SVFLUX™ or SVHEAT™. The basic concept for creating three-dimensional models is layering surfaces where surfaces can either be krigged from three-dimensional scatter data, entered by the user, or built from a series of interlocking planes. Most recently 3D models can be created based on extrusions of 2D models.

A number of very specific and targeted improvements were made to the SVOffice™ software in order to further simplify 3D model creation. The following specific improvements were made to the graphical description and visualization of a 3D numerical model during the course of development of the SVSLOPE®3D software package:

Numerous improvements to the visualization of 3D models in the front end

Numerous improvements to the 3D model creation facilities

It was also the intent of the design team to create a package with exceptional state-of-the-art 3D visualization of the results. This was accomplished with a hybrid approach in which the user can view full three-dimensional representations as well as two-dimensional slices through the critical slip surface. The two-dimensional representations can occur at orientations along the XZ or YZ axes. These two-dimensional representations are identical to the two-dimensional representations already implemented in the two-dimensional SVSLOPE® package. Therefore portions of the three-dimensional visualization are similar to the two-dimensional package. Detailed information on the slice by slice basis can be contoured or presented in the back end (AcuMesh).

In order to develop such a software tool, the technical staff at SoilVision was key in the development of the new package. The core development team assembled to undertake the software development have received graduate degrees by studying under slope stability experts such as Yamagami (dynamic programming research), Morgenstern (Morgenstern-Price method; statistical analysis), and Fredlund (GLE method; dynamic programming research). It was important that each member of the development team has had experience in both geotechnical engineering as well as major software development experience. The core development team included HaiHua Lu, MSc, Tiequn Feng, PhD/PEng, Murray Fredlund, PhD/PEng, Rob Thode, BSc/PEng, Todd Myhre, BSc, and Del Fredlund, PhD/PEng/OC,. The combined group provided significant experience from the field of slope stability analysis.

Proper documentation of the software was a priority. The documentation was divided separately into a user’s manual, a tutorial manual, a verification manual, and a theory manual. The framework established for handling the development of quality documentation for the 2D package was utilized for the 3D package.

Verification of the software package was considered of paramount importance and a great deal of time was extended comparing SVSLOPE® results to published benchmarks. Because the area of three-dimensional slope stability analysis is newer, there are far fewer benchmarks from which to draw. All classic three-dimensional benchmarks were compiled from research literature. The benchmarks were then re-created in the SVSLOPE®3D software and the answers compared to published results. The benchmarking process was at times tedious as there is no guarantee that published results are necessarily correct. In the end all published benchmarks were matched reasonably well and the results are presented in the SVSLOPE® verification manual. All compiled 2D and 3D benchmarks are solved with each incremental release of our software and checked to ensure models are all solved within required tolerance limits.

We are pleased to introduce you to SVSLOPE 3D, a new standard in 3D slope stability analysis. It is the culmination of years of work, thousands of man-hours and the most extensive review and verification program ever executed by our company. The software has already been successfully applied to world-class projects. Multiple other peer-reviewed consulting applications with the software have also already been performed.

SVSLOPE 3D is intended to provide geotechnical consultants with a comprehensive slope stability package that pays special attention to recent advances in the analysis of natural and man-made slopes. We feel that this product implements a balance of leading edge technologies as well as classic slope stability methods and will provide added value to geotechnical engineering consultants. It is fast, easy-to-use, and highly visual. We welcome you to use the results of our hard work at your convenience!

SVOFFICE™5 User Manual

Verification Manual

The investment in geotechnical / hydrogeological software is an important decision for most consulting firms. Software must perform well and yield results in a limited timeframe such that reports can be completed on time and under budget. We recognize this at SoilVision Systems Ltd. and and have worked hard over the past number of years to provide software which is both easy to use and technologically advanced. We believe that our current SVOFFICE™5 software products are the best currently available for geotechnical and hydrogeological applications. Listed below are a few of the reasons why your firm would benefit from our software from the perspective of a manager.

3D Modeling Solutions

Modeling of systems which are not adequately represented by a simplified 2D cross section may be accomplished in full 3D. Examples include regional flow, levee analysis, and planar geometry.

Advanced Slope Stability Analysis

With the highly advanced
SVSLOPE® slope stability analysis package, your company will have access to the most comprehensive array of deterministic and probabilistic methods of limit equilibrium and stress-based analysis methods.

Advanced Model Coupling

Coupling of the air/water/thermal phases allows more comprehensive analysis of i) cover designs and, ii) waste rock flow, and iii) various other applications.

Monte Carlo, APEM, Latin Hypercube and other types of probabilistic analysis may be carried out in our
SVSLOPE® package. Monte Carlo analysis for steady state models can be carried out in our
SVFLUX™GT package.